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Thursday, August 25, 2011

In Libya, Culture May Be The Enduring Adversary Of Change

By Christopher R. Hill

While NATO probably will not want to replicate its Libya intervention elsewhere anytime soon, it seems that the alliance, with a little help from its friends, has prevailed in toppling Colonel Moammar Gadhafi. This is a good moment for NATO, but one that evokes a sense of relief rather than celebration.

Given the mismatch of member states’ policy (topple Gadhafi) and a strategy to “protect civilians” based on a contested United Nations Security Council resolution, NATO can certainly take pride in managing a great challenge and strengthening its role as the preeminent Euro-Atlantic institution.

Now, however, comes the real hard part. Libya was not a smoothly operating country before the civil war started six months ago; today, it is thoroughly broken and will require an enormous amount of rebuilding – post-conflict operations, or “stability ops,” to use the current jargon. Libya’s needs run the gamut: governance, institutional capacity building, economic reform, and security.

As in most post-conflict countries, effective and legitimate leadership will prove hard to come by. The National Transitional Council, the governing body established in February by the various rebel groups, has functioned fairly well, given the mammoth centrifugal forces and other pressures at work. But the skills needed for leadership of a wartime governing council are very different from those needed to run a sovereign state.

Given the variety of the figures on the council, there will be natural pressure from within Libya and beyond for a quick move to elections of some sort. The various political groupings need to discuss a timeframe for a popular vote, brief the restive international community, and finally set (and keep!) the date. But that date should be set sufficiently in the future to allow an adequate start on rebuilding political institutions and the economy.

The security and judicial system, a wasteland under Gadhafi, should be the first priority, though it is the area probably most in need of deeper, longer-term reform. One can only imagine the endemic nepotism and corruption that have traditionally characterized Libya’s police forces, but they will need to be made adequately operational quickly, probably via a new loyalty oath and some crash training. It is not ideal by any means, but allowing the streets to be policed by militias and various tribal-based groups would be far more dangerous.

What to do with the various rebel groups that “liberated” the country will probably be one of the main challenges facing any new provisional government. One can expect that NATO’s devastating airstrikes on Gadhafi’s forces will soon be forgotten in the heroic retelling of the intrepid rebel troops’ advance to Tripoli.

The sooner these forces can be decommissioned, the better. Many will probably be absorbed into Libya’s security service, but many others, one hopes, can go back to their place of origin. The sheer amount of weaponry strewn around the country will probably pose the greatest challenge to its prospects as a successful state with an effective government.

Gadhafi’s armed forces were carefully chosen on the basis of loyalty and ethnic affiliation, rather than any concept of merit, so the temptation to strip everyone to their underwear and send them home (to describe what may be the most humane of outcomes) might be great. But arguably the most important lesson learned in Iraq resulted from the almost catastrophic decision to decommission Saddam Hussein’s army without pay or pension. That move lay at the very root of many of Iraq’s subsequent security problems.

Libya is fortunate is some ways. The oil sector appears to be relatively intact, and thus should contribute to government revenues relatively soon. By contrast, other countries undergoing radical change, including Egypt and Tunisia, are more dependent on the service sector, including the always-finicky tourism industry.

The international community must stand ready to assist Libya. Key decisions need to be made in close consultation with the country’s emerging leadership about which international institutions, civilian and military, should be present on the ground. Again, NATO might be popular now, but that could change quickly. Libyans, like other Arabs, may turn out to hold the conflicting views that have so confused the West in Iraq: they want us there, but they also want us gone.

Governance, institution building, security, and agreeing on an international presence are daunting challenges, but probably the most worrisome aspect of post-Gadhafi Libya will be the view among Western experts that experience in Iraq and Afghanistan has given them the knowledge and the skill sets to manage all these operations. One recalls Talleyrand’s famous aphorism on the restitution of the Bourbons – that they learned nothing and forgot nothing.

The Western countries’ collective knowledge is no substitute for a collective wisdom about Libya’s distinct history and rhythms. Gadhafi was a brutal dictator, but he gained power – and maintained his grip on it for 42 years – for a reason. If we learned anything from Iraq and Afghanistan, it is that a few years of politics, or institutional rebuilding, does not trump centuries of culture. Those centuries, not the remnants of the Gadhafi regime, are likely to be the real enemy of change in Libya.

About Me

I graduated from the French University in Beirut (St Joseph) specialising in Political and Economic Sciences. I started my working life in 1973 as a reporter and journalist for the pan-Arab magazine “Al-Hawadess” in Lebanon later becoming its Washington, D.C. correspondent. I subsequently moved to London in 1979 joining “Al-Majallah” magazine as its Deputy Managing Editor. In 1984 joined “Assayad” magazine in London initially as its Managing Editor and later as Editor-in-Chief. Following this, in 1990 I joined “Al-Wasat” magazine (part of the Dar-Al-Hayat Group) in London as a Managing Editor. In 2011 I became the Editor-In-Chief of Miraat el-Khaleej (Gulf Mirror). In July 2012 I became the Chairman of The Board of Asswak Al-Arab Publishing Ltd in UK and the Editor In Chief of its first Publication "Asswak Al-Arab" Magazine (Arab Markets Magazine) (www.asswak-alarab.com).

I have already authored five books. The first “The Tears of the Horizon” is a love story. The second “The Winter of Discontent in The Gulf” (1991) focuses on the first Gulf war sparked by Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. His third book is entitled “Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: From Balfour Promise to Bush Declaration: The Complications and the Road to a Lasting Peace” (March 2008). The fourth book is titled “How Iran Plans to Fight America and Dominate the Middle East” (October 2008) And the fifth and the most recent is titled "JIHAD'S NEW HEARTLANDS: Why The West Has Failed To Contain Islamic Fundamentalism" (May 2011).

Furthermore, I wrote the memoirs of national security advisor to US President Ronald Reagan, Mr Robert McFarlane, serializing them in “Al-Wasat” magazine over 14 episodes in 1992.

Over the years, I have interviewed and met several world leaders such as American President Bill Clinton, British Prime Minister Margaret Thacher, Late King Hassan II of Morocco, Late King Hussein of Jordan,Tunisian President Zein El-Abedine Bin Ali, Lybian Leader Moammar Al-Quadhafi,President Amine Gemayel of Lebanon,late Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri, Late Palestinian Chairman Yasser Arafat, Haitian President Jean Claude Duvalier, Late United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan,Algerian President Shazli Bin Jdid, Jamaican Prime Minister Edward Siyagha and more...